Type: Acts of the European Union: European Parliament resolution on the institutional aspects of the accession of the European Union to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms

Authority: European Authorities - European Union: European Parliament

Date: 05/19/2010

Subject: The European Parliament underlined that the principal added value of the accession of the EU to the ECHR lies in recourse for individuals against acts by means of which the law of the Union is implemented by its institutions or the Member States; it considered that for the purposes of complying with the requirement set out in Article 35 ECHR for domestic remedies to have been exhausted, the applicant shall have exhausted the judicial remedies of the State concerned including a reference for a preliminary ruling to the Court in Luxembourg; the latter procedure shall be regarded as having been complied with where following a request to that end by the applicant the national court does not consider it appropriate for a reference for a preliminary ruling to be made. The European Parliament stressed that the fact that the European Court of Human Rights may find a violation in a case that has already been decided by the Court of Justice of the European Union would in no way cast a doubt on the credibility of the Court of Justice of the European Union as an ultimate umpire in the EU judicial system. Contrary, the accession will compensate to some extent for the fact that the scope of the Court of Justice of the European Union is somewhat constrained in the matters of foreign and security policy and police and security policy by providing useful external judicial supervision of all EU activities. It recommended that the Commission be mandated also to negotiate accession to all the protocols concerning rights corresponding to the Charter of Fundamental Rights, regardless of whether they have been ratified by the Member States of the Union; concerning technical questions, it stressed that accession to the ECHR does not make the Union a member of the Council of Europe but that a degree of participation by the Union in the ECHR bodies is necessary in order to ensure proper integration of the Union into the ECHR system and that, therefore, the Union should have certain rights in this domain.

Classification: General theme

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